History Roads: Earthquake
by Brian
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No road damage after South Texas earthquake
There was a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on in the San Antonio area this morning as a 4.8 temblor struck about 50 miles southeast of the city, the largest on record for this part of the state.
The biggest quake around here before today’s was in 1993. Long-timers may remember that just a few days before that quake, inspectors had found some cracking in a pylon supporting the then-new upper deck of I-10 near Woodlawn. There was briefly some concern that the quake may have done additional damage. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case and the column was subsequently retrofitted with some additional tension rods.
I checked with the folks at TxDOT and they tell me that they sent inspectors out after today’s quake to look at the bridges on state highways in Atascosa County. Everything checked-out fine.
Construction and closures Roads: Loop 1604 stimulus funds Texas Department of Transportation Tommy Adkisson widening
by Brian
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Ribbon cut on Loop 1604 project in NE San Antonio
Local TxDOT officials joined with several dignitaries yesterday to cut the ribbon on a project that widened Loop 1604 near Randolph AFB. The 17 month, $6.6 million project upgraded 2.5 miles of Loop 1604 from a two-lane “farm” road to a four-lane divided highway. The project came in on-time and under budget.
Speakers at the ribbon-cutting included US Representative Henry Cuellar. Cuellar helped secure the federal economic stimulus funding to get the project off the ground.
This section of the loop has been in the news recently. A project to continue the expansion from its current terminus at Lower Seguin Road to I-10 is planned to start next year. However, county officials had briefly considered transferring funding from that project to construct the northern set of ramps at US 281 and Loop 1604. An alternative source of funding was found, however, thus allowing the widening project to continue as planned.
It’s worth noting that this expansion mirrors a similar expansion done on Loop 1604 West nearly two decades ago. Road improvements tend to be incremental or evolutionary. The road system San Antonio has today didn’t just drop out of the sky one day. The project dedicated yesterday upgraded a congested and dangerous two-lane road to a four-lane divided highway with traffic signals. This configuration is a substantial improvement over the previous road and is more than adequate for the current needs and for those in the foreseeable future, just as the expansion of Loop 1604 south of Braun Road was back in the ’90s. Will traffic growth eventually render this roadway obsolete?  Maybe. But building a full-fledged expressway at this location now is unnecessary and would have been an injudicious use of scarce funding, just like doing so out on Loop 1604 West back in the ’90s would have been.
The curse of Street View
Picture of the Eifel Tower from my latest "trip" to Paris
Lots of people have their Internet compulsions and addictions: Facebook, Farmville, YouTube, eBay, video games, and so on. My wife is a recovering Pinterest addict.
My web vice is Google Maps Street View.
I’ve always been a spatial kind of guy. I instinctively know which way is North. I was telling my mom how to get home from the airport when I was four. My degree is in Geography. I have no need for a GPS.
And I love to travel. Mostly, I’m a it’s-not-the-destination-but-the-journey kind of guy. I love watching the scenery go by, seeing new places in fast-forward. Of course, that comes from being a transportation-enthusiast. Getting from Point A to Point B is often my favorite part of vacations.
So now that I can essentially do that from my desk for a huge chunk of the world using Street View, it can quickly consume a significant quantity of my time. more »
Roads: Gilbeau Road Loop 1604 Shaenfield Road superstreet
by Brian
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Second Loop 1604 superstreet intersection opens tomorrow
The second of two superstreet intersections on Loop 1604 in San Antonio is slated to open tomorrow. The intersection at Shaenfield should be mostly online for motorists for tomorrow morning’s commute. There will still be some finish-up work continuing during the next few weeks, but the new traffic patterns will be in effect tomorrow morning. That means motorists coming from Shaenfield will no longer be able to turn left onto Loop 1604 northbound. Instead, everyone will turn right and those wanting to go north will then use a new turnaround about 1/4th of a mile downstream. Motorists wanting to turn left from Loop 1604 onto Shaenfield will still be able to do so using new dual left turn lanes.
If you’re observant, you’ll notice that there have also been left turn lanes built from southbound Loop 1604 that seem to go nowhere and a second turnaround north of Shaenfield that seems to serve no purpose. Those have been built in anticipation of a future extension of Shaenfield to the east. The City of San Antonio is currently in the planning stages for that.
The superstreet intersection at Loop 1604 and New Gilbeau opened about a month ago and has provided a noticeable reduction in congestion. The final element of the current package of improvements along that stretch of Loop 1604 will make changes the SH 151 intersection; it’s due to be completed later this year. An underpass for SH 151 at Loop 1604 is slated to begin construction next Spring.
RELATED SITE:
Construction and closures Roads: Wurzbach Parkway
by Brian
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Final section of Wurzbach Parkway officially breaks ground
It’s been 30 years in the making. Today, local officials gathered at Walker Ranch Park to officially break ground on the final section of the Wurzbach Parkway. The segment, from West Ave. to Jones-Maltsberger, is actually already under construction, along with the two adjacent segments. When they’re completed in 2014, the long-awaited east-west thoroughfare will finally be complete.
Speaking at today’s groundbreaking were the Wolffs (Nelson and Kevin), Lyle Larson, local TxDOT district engineer Mario Medina, and TxDOT’s new interim executive director John Barton. Somewhat surprisingly, there was little media coverage of the event; only KABB and KTSA had stories on it.
For more information about the three current projects, see my site here:
Texas Highway Man – Wurzbach Parkway
Speed limits going up
If you have a lead foot, then you’ll love this news.
First, if you hadn’t heard already, the Legislature earlier this year approved– and the governor signed– a bill that would raise the statutory maximum speed limit for state highways to 75 mph (excluding, of course, the existing 80 mph speed limit on some sections of I-10 and I-20 out in West Texas.) Texas now joins all but a handful of states west of the Mississippi with a 75 mph top speed. The limit can only be increased on roads where an engineering study determines that it’s safe to do so, but if past practice holds true, that should be the majority of roads that are currently capped at 70 mph.
Even better, the bill finally eliminates the matrix of speed limits for daytime/nighttime and cars/trucks. All speed limits will now apply to all vehicles at all times. Texas was the only state to still have a different nighttime limit and one of the few with a separate limit for trucks.
The new law takes effect September 1st. A separate effort to increase the maximum speed to 85 mph died.
More recently, the speed limit on the northern arc of Loop 410 has gone up from 60 mph to 65 mph. With the recent completion of construction to widen the freeway to 10 lanes, TxDOT completed a speed study that showed the 85th percentile speed being 65 mph, so in accordance with agency engineering guidelines, TxDOT asked the City of San Antonio to officially increase the speed limit to 65 mph north of US 90. Signs went up this past week.
I also recently noticed that the speed limit along Loop 1604 south of Braun Rd. increased from 55 mph to 60 mph.
Roads: Braun Road Gilbeau Road Loop 1604 Shaenfield Road superstreet
by Brian
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First Loop 1604 superstreet intersection opens tomorrow
The first of two superstreet intersections on Loop 1604 West is set to open Thursday morning in time for rush hour. Crews have been working this week to pave and complete the other finishing touches. The final work will be done tonight to convert the intersection to its new configuration.
Starting tomorrow morning, traffic coming from New Gilbeau will no longer be able to turn left onto Loop 1604 southbound. Instead, all traffic will turn right with those wishing to go southbound then taking the new turnaround about 1,500 feet downstream. Traffic headed southbound on 1604 will still be able to turn left onto New Gilbeau.
First I-69 signs to go up in Robstown
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has given approval to sign the first segment of Interstate 69 in Texas. The 6-mile section of US 77 stretching from I-37 to Robstown just west of Corpus Christi will likely get the signs later this year. That section of road was upgraded to interstate standards by TxDOT back in 2006 and is part of the larger I-69 corridor plan for Texas. That plan also includes US 59 through East and South Texas and US 281 south of I-37. Lower Rio Grande Valley officials are also hoping to get US 83 through the Valley added to the corridor designation. The Valley is the largest urban area in the US not connected to the Interstate system.
Signing the segments that are at Interstate-standards is an important first step in the overall I-69 project. Besides the public awareness it brings, it also allows the route to receive special federal Interstate maintenance funding and makes obtaining funding to extend it south a bit easier.
Rebirth of a blog
It's all his fault! 🙂
It’s not like there hasn’t been anything to talk about. The 281/1604 interchange started construction earlier this year amid some very interesting legal proceedings. Work also started on the superstreet out on Loop 1604 as well as a variety of other smaller projects. The Legislative session came and went with no progress on transportation funding. And a certain toll road opponent has been in the news a few times lately reminding us that there still needs to be a contrasting narrative.
But the past seven months has been crazy for me. I started the year with a brand new baby boy, my wife’s and my second joy. Daddy-duty has kept me quite busy as did several unusually consuming projects at my day job. On top of that, the general lassitude that comes with now being 40 kicked-in, all of which combined to relegate my longtime enjoyment of all things transportation-related—including writing this blog—to the back burner for a while. But things have slackened lately, meaning that I can hopefully get back to blogging about local transportation issues and updating my website, which had also gone dormant for the first half of this year. I probably won’t be as prolific as I used to be, but I’m aiming not to go seven months between posts!
So if you’re still out there, thanks for sticking with us. I’m in touch with my co-bloggers Patrick and Hugh and hopefully they’ll be back in the mix here soon as well.
Cheers,
–Brian
I love it when I’m right…
Back from a few weeks of daddy-duty, and this caught my eye right off the bat…
One year ago, almost to the day, I posted here defending the TxDOT $1 billion “accounting error” that toll opponents, gubernatorial candidates, and other TxDOT-haters were using to justify their anti-TxDOT rhetoric. In it, I noted that if people would just take a few minutes to understand what happened, they would realize that the “error” was in reality quite harmless, easy to make, and, most importantly, that no money had actually been lost.Â
Well, lo-and-behold, the TxDOT Restructure Council’s recent final report with recommendations on how to improve that agency included a footnote about the error and guess what– it completely validated my position. From the Ft. Worth Star:
And, the report included a miscellaneous note about the 2007 fiasco involving a $1.1 billion “accounting error” that briefly led to a statewide shut down of road work.
The report concluded that in fact there was no actual accounting error — and the department didn’t actually lose $1.1 billion, as many critics have alleged. Instead, the department was in effect a victim of its own dissemination of inaccurate information.
In September 2007, the report noted, a memo was sent to all district engineers regarding the next year’s letting schedule. The memo informed them that $4.1 billion would be available for construction projects, but that figure was inaccurate because it included $600 million in bond funding that had been double-counted internally, and $500 million from the Texas Mobility Fund that wasn’t available.
Steps were quickly taken to correct the mistake and prevent it in the future, the report noted.
The full report is available here:
http://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot-info/restructure/report_010511.pdf
The discussion of the accounting error is on page 55 of the report.